Last Wednesday, the Cardinals lost in the 13th inning.
Saturday, the Cardinals lost in the 13th inning.
Yesterday, the Cardinals lost in the 13th inning.
This is getting old.
I wonder if that’s ever happened before. A team losing three extra inning games, all in the same extra inning, in less than a week? Seems unlikely.
Frazier didn’t suck last year. The batting average was low, but if you hit a lot of home runs and play decent third base you can be an okay player.
I don’t have the batted-ball info in front of me but my suspicion is that Frazier’s .195 average so far is at least partially bad luck. If the Sox could get him for a reasonable price, he might pay off nicely. It’s a risk, but Boston doesn’t have a lot of terrific choices at third.
Well, now I gotta go look up Todd Frazier’s bbref. Ok, 40 homers last year, but that’s it. 163 Ks, .225 BA, .302 OBP. Sounds pretty close to sucky, but I don’t know anything about his defense at 3B. And yes, his BABIP is crazy low this year, but it was low last year, too.
Trading away Travis Shaw is looking foolish for Boston. He’s doing pretty well in Milwaukee.
What really looks foolish is counting on Sandoval.
Well, exactly. They would probably not have traded Shaw if they didn’t think they could count on Sandoval. Chris Sale got knocked around a little bit to the tune of 4 runs (3 earned) and only 6 K’s but the Sox managed to pull out a W anyway. How they score any runs at all is a bit of a mystery. 20 runs in 2 days on 0 home runs. Boston is dead last in the AL in home runs by fairly significant margin. But they lead the league in doubles, so they’re overall slugging is about average.
Frazier is a solid defensive third baseman - far, far better than Sandoval at this point. I don’t like his type of offensive player but he’s not worthless and there’s some upside.
Yeah, that’s kind of a tough one when Sandoval was the guy you were counting on. Of course, Boston was in a tough spot here, in that they could not have traded Sandoval, who no one would have taken and returned anything of value.
I can’t from here reconstruct the Red Sox roster at the point where Shaw was traded, but I admit it is kind of weird that they dealt away a pretty good 27-year-old player that easily. They got a good relief pitcher in return, who promptly got hurt so that sucked, but if you look at Tyler Thornburg’s 2016 stats you have to admit he was an enticing prize.
I was reading an ESPN piece about Manny Machado, and came across this interesting bit:
This seems like an unfortunate trend. The all or nothing approach to hitting is a little boring, but it’s easy to see why it happened.
I 100% agree about strikeouts in today’s MLB. There was a time when 100 K’s was a lot. The Rob Deers and Dave Kingmans of the league were derided for their strikeouts.
Then sometime in the mid 2000’s teams decided they didn’t care if Adam Dunn strikes out 200+ times as long as he’s also hitting 40+ home runs.
Now, you can be considered a great hitter and strikeout way more than 150 times. Mike Trout led the AL in 2014 with 184 and won the MVP! So it looks like the acceptance of strikeouts is here to stay.
Man, if only the Reds could get their starting rotation off the schneid. Homer Bailey, Desclafani and others cannot get back soon enough to supplant the likes of Arroyo and rookies that have no business being up in the bigs other than a lack of options. Our best rookie starter, Amir Garrett, is hurt.
We have one of the best defenses in all of baseball, one of the better offenses, and a very good, but overworked, bullpen. Our starting pitching is probably the worst in the league.
This is a shame given the monstrously good seasons Votto, Zach Cozart, Billy Hamilton, etc are having so far. Hamilton, the speediest of speedsters, scored last night from first on a single in the ninth for the go ahead run! Seemed like a routine play, but watch him turn on the jets…
Wait - are you suggesting Mike Trout isn’t a great hitter? I just want to make sure.
I think the opposite is true. I’m seeing a lot more first pitch swinging this year. I’m seeing a lot more of teams trying to replicate what the Royals did a few years back.
Including from the former “Drive the pitchcount up Red Sox”.
edit: Mind you, I haven’t seen a lot of other teams than the Red Sox…nor am I accounting for swinging for the fences apparently.
But strikeouts are still really high. It’s just true. Strikeouts way outnumber singles, and in fact are getting close to outnumbering all hits… so far there have been 11931 hits and 11441 strikeouts.
This is an interesting trend and I’m not sure what can be done about it if anything can be.
I mean, Mike Trout IS a great hitter. There have always been great hitters who struck out a lot; Mike Schmidt was an awesome hitter, and he led the league in striking out four times. Mickey Mantle led the AL in strikeouts five times and he was one of the greatest hitters who ever lived.
What’s happened is basically two things:
- All hitters have learned what Mike Schmidt and Mickey Mantle understood; more strikeouts are worth it if you work the count and wait for pitches you can drive. Slapping away at anything can work for some guys but in major league ball the ideal strategy is to wait for a pitch that can be crushed. This will increase strikeouts, but a talented hitter will draw more walks, hit more home runs, and often get just as many hits, because by not swinging at less hittable pitches, he reduces weak groundouts and popouts. Striking out isn’t really any worse than popping out at the MLB level. So Mike Trout strikes out a lot, but when he makes contact his batting average is insanely high - it’s .461 this year, which is nuts - because when he hits the ball he does so with force. If he chose to strike out less, his BABIP would be much lower, because he would be tapping weak ground balls and hitting pointless pop flies by swining at tougher pitches to hit.
I mean, I in my prime could probably have struck out a lot less than Mike Trout, if my intention had been “just make contact.” But my batting average would have been .020, because every weak attempt at just making contact would have been a roller to the mound or a little popup to the first baseman. The purpose of a hitter isn’t to just make contact, it’s to create runs, and minimizing your chances of striking out is not the right ways to create runs. Not striking out isn’t that hard for an MLB player to do… if they don’t care about hitting the ball with force. But you must hit the ball with force to have a realistic chance at getting a hit.
- Sabermetrics has changed the way that MLB teams identify and use talented pitchers. Some people in this thread won’t like it, but it’s true; the Bill James revolution has resulted in improved pitching.
What James and those who build on him realized pretty early on is that one of the primary predictors of a pitcher’s success is his ability to strike men out. A pitcher who cannot strike men out, but is successful, is almost certainly just lucky, and if you don’t believe me you can look it up. K-W ratio is a better predictor of a pitcher’s imminent success than his ERA is, and stupid better than his win-loss record.
This was not understood 30 years ago. So when Jeff Ballard went 18-8 in 1989 everyone was like “man this guy looks great” even though he couldn’t strike anyone out, and the Bill Jameses of the world were saying “uh, yeah, he just got lucky.” And Ballard never pitched well again because he DID just get lucky. Pete Vuckovich went 18-6 and won the Cy Young Award (maybe the worst choice ever) in 1982 striking out 105 and walking 102, and everyone thought he was great 'cause he went 18-6 which looks pretty. He went 8-16 the rest of his career.
MLB teams at the time simply did not know this, and so their selection and deployment of pitchers was extremely sub-optimal. They were giving starts and innings to inferior pitchers based on luck and W-L records rather than actual, demonstrated talent. So you didn’t have as many strikeouts as you could have because pitchers were not being selected for that ability. Well, now things are different; every MLB team has accepted as fact that a pitcher’s strikeout rate is a critical element of evaluating his skill, and so pitchers are specifically selected for this ability, and if they fail to demonstrate the ability to strike men out they’re not chosen for playing time. So strikeouts are up because MLB teams are concentrating on finding pitchers who strike men out.
There’s other factors at play too but these are the two big ones.
So is this bad? And if so, what can be done about it?
If it’s unchecked I do think it’s bad. Homer-and-strikeout baseball is less exciting than baseball with lots of hits and running and stuff.
What can be done?
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The first thing to do is just wait. Offense levels go up and down kind of randomly. It would be silly to do anything radical.
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Unfortunately, after than I can’t think of any strategies that AREN’T radical.
Of course not. I’m suggesting nobody in the Boggs/Gwynn era could strike out 180+ times and be considered a great hitter, never mind the best hitter in baseball. But Mike Trout is a great hitter, and probably the best in baseball, because hitters’ approach has changed so much from then to now.
To be honest, I’d rather watch Wade Boggs hit. But I can certainly appreciate that Mike Trout is an awesome hitter.
Defensive shifting must also play a role in reducing the overall number of singles, as that’s the type of base hit they prevent.
That’s probably right. Just going through some random MVP lists on b-r. com, Schmidt and Dale Murphy are maybe the two most likely candidates, but they didn’t get close to 180+ Ks.
Boggs certainly was a lot of fun to watch - he was one of my favorite hitters when I was growing up, along with George Brett. But man is Mike Trout amazing to see swing the bat.
Just heard a stat on the radio: there’s been 140 MLB pitchers that have undergone Tommy John surgery since 2012…more then DOUBLE the amount for the entire 1990’s.
Why is that? Teams rushing young arms? People throwing harder and harder? Lots of young arms throwing curveballs?
An interesting case here is Jose Altuve, who had numbers pretty much in line with Gwynn or Ichiro when he won his first batting title in 2014 - not many strikeouts, not many walks, lots of contact, very high BABIP. I thought at the time that he had a chance to become that kind of hitter, and if it had been up to me I would have said it wasn’t worth screwing up a productive (if not optimal) approach that worked for him; but he decided to change his approach to a more conventional power-and-walks (not a ton of walks but much more than 2014), and as a result he’s a more productive, if less fun, hitter now batting .298 than he was batting .341 in 2014.
Where have you heard that Altuve changed his approach this year? I’d be really surprised if he wanted to do anything differently than he did last year.
I broke the link as you asked.